For the first time since the police announced that Frédérick Silva began collaborating with them a month and a half ago, revelations of the hitman were disclosed in court on Wednesday at the Montreal courthouse, learned The Press.
Posted at 6:38 p.m.
These revelations, “more or less 60 pages and redacted”, according to what the prosecutor Me Antoine Piché, concern an accomplice of Silva, Giovanni Presta son, accused, as was Silva, of the murder of the former member of the Rockers, Sébastien Beauchamp, who died under a hail of bullets in the parking lot of a service station east of Montreal in December 2018.
Presta’s first-degree murder trial is scheduled to begin September 8 before a judge alone.
Me Piché announced to the Honorable Judge Marc-André Blanchard of the Superior Court that he had no intention of using these 60 pages of statements or having Silva testify so as not to delay the start of the trial, which what agreed the lawyer of Presta, Me Dominique Shoofey.
“The Prosecution declares that it waives the use of any evidence arising from the testimony of a person named Frédérick Silva for the trial of the accused in the instance insofar as it is held and preserved within the time limits provided for in fall of 2022, more specifically with regard to the administration of evidence and the plea”, judge Blanchard dictated to the clerk so that she could enter it in the minutes.
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Sébastien Beauchamp murdered in December 2018.
Presta is also charged with possession and manufacture of restricted or prohibited weapons, possession of silencers and illegal storage of firearms, but these proceedings will take place after the murder trial.
Dramatic turnaround
Frédérick Silva is considered by the police to be a contract killer who for years has received contracts from several criminal organizations in the Montreal area.
Listed as one of Canada’s most wanted criminals following the wanton murder of a patron of a strip club in Montreal in May 2017 — a murder for which he is soon to receive his sentence — Silva has been on the loose. for almost two years before being arrested by investigators and members of the Tactical Intervention Group of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) in February 2019.
But during his run, even knowing he was one of the most wanted criminals, Silva committed assassinations.
He was charged with the murders of three people that occurred in the fall of 2018, including Sébastien Beauchamp, and an attempted murder committed against the late clan leader Salvatore Scoppa in February 2017.
He was then sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole for 25 years, after a trial which he himself ended by acknowledging that the prosecution’s evidence was conclusive.
Silva and his lawyer, Ms.e Danièle Roy, intended to appeal, but following the murders of two of his relatives, and after an SPVM investigator had won his trust, Frédérick Silva began to collaborate with the police.
Flanked by members of the tactical intervention group, he was “extracted” from the penitentiary where he was in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines and was transported by helicopter to a secret location.
The nervous environment
According to our information, Silva began to confess his crimes to the investigators – what is called a “declaration of life” – and to give certain information on contracts fulfilled or given within organized crime in Montreal over the years.
These declarations will however have to be corroborated by the investigators and it will surely be necessary to wait several months before beginning to see results in this large-scale investigation which is beginning.
Although he has started collaborating, Silva has reportedly not yet signed a contract with the authorities.
Several investigators hand-picked from Major Crimes and the SPVM’s Organized Crime Division, and others from Crimes Against Persons from the Sûreté du Québec, have formed a joint team that will investigate any crimes that may arise from the statements. by Frederick Silva.
The major investigations of recent years seem to want to show that Silva had direct access to influential members of Montreal organized crime and that he was not just an executor.
Criminal and judicial sources have told The Press that organized crime individuals have been nervous since Silva turned around.
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